Se7en (1995) – Review

“You know this isn’t going to have a happy ending.”
It’s with this somewhat throwaway line located somewhere in the middle of David Fincher’s tangibly bleak Se7en, that Lieutenant Detective William Somerset won the the 1995 award for understatement hands down. Yes, Fincher’s infamous sophomore achievement may be most famous by unleashing one of the greatest climatic gutpunches of the 90s, but in many ways this neo-noir, serial killer procedural, is it/isn’t it a horror flick, may be one of the most defining movies of the decade.
The oppressive nihilism, the choking set design, Andrew Kevin Walker’s take no prisoners script, Fincher’s unflinching determination to ruin everyone’s day, the Odd Couple partnership of Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman, JOHN FUCKING DOE – Se7en doesn’t put a grimy, terrifying, fatalistic foot out of place. In fact, taking a cue from that other, great, 90s, serial killer movie – The Silence Of The Lambs – Se7en remains insanely influential, thus evading David Mills’ angry claims that John Doe’s mission would ultimately be a movie of the week, or a fucking t-shirt at best…

Lieutenant Detective William Somerset is rapidly approaching retirement and to be honest, it can’t come soon enough. You see, in the unnamed, rain lashed city in which he’s based, Somerset has long since burnt out due to inordinate amounts of crime and corruption that has led to widespread apathy. Into this societal cesspool comes the idealistic Detective Mills who has transferred to the area in the noble hope that he can make a difference and almost immediately the two a paired together for a particularly harrowing homicide.
Some one has targeted an obese man and forced him to undergo a traumatic ordeal that saw him being forced to eat himself to death at gunpoint and while it stands out from the usual shootings and murder, it turns out that he’s only the first of numerous victims that are being used to make some sort of terrible point by using the Seven Deadly Sins as a guide. With the obese man being labeled as “gluttony”, soon “greed” follows suit when a high profile lawyer is forced to mutilate himself in his office and Mills and Somerset are forced to struggle with the fact that a meticulous serial killer is hard at work and with five victims yet to go, the pair double down in order to catch him before he finishes.
However, why the world views of the two detectives often clash, their united efforts soon start to gain traction as they gradually close in on the elusive “John Doe”. But as the whole ordeal seems to be coming to an end, there’s a worrying sense that Doe is playing chess while Mills and Somerset are being forced to play checkers, and they’ll have no way to prepare for the devastating endgame that the killer has had planned for a very long time.

If you really need the influence of Se7en spelling out for you, all you have to do is look at the many parallels between the obscenely complex plans concocted by the dead eyed, fingerprintless John Doe and virtually ever plan carried out by Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight. While the actor’s portrayal of the clown prince of crime is a genuine original, the whole act of bamboozling the cops by pulling unforseen moves purely to prove a twisted belief system may be a favorite of Christopher Nolan’s, but it’s pure Fincher through and through – we won’t even mention bringing up Paul Dano’s Riddler from Matt Reeves’ The Batman because that’ll be like shooting fish in a barrel. But even beyond Batman movies, the unfathomable schemes of Doe’s deranged mind have informed virtually every tricksy villain with a plan from Loki to Jigsaw and while you could argue that Se7en’s Dante loving antagonist is merely an evolution of the type of lunatics you’d get in a Robert Harris adaptation, the real difference here is that John Doe wins.
Oh yes, we’re digging into that ending pretty early and if for some reason you haven’t experienced Se7en’s truly brutal coup de grace then you’d better rectify it immediately. But while much praise has been deservingly heaped on a final twist that still hollows you out like a canoe all these years later, it would be nothing without all the groundwork and grimy world building that David Fincher embarked on to create an entirely new breed of horror/thriller. Merging a sort of industrial-themed neo-noir that gave a crumbling city lashed with perpetual rainfall, with the unflinching lack of mercy reserved for hard-core horror (the hellish detail of apartment of John Doe isn’t a million miles from the bone and skin laden living room of the Sawyer Family from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre), you can tell Fincher is using Walker’s godless screenplay to purge every frustration earned during the torturous production of Alien³, and provide a gnarled middle finger to following established rules.

The result was a blast of unfettered doom that was made all the more affecting by the performances at hand. Morgan Freeman, usually seen as a dependable, warm blanket of a man (he’s played God, for fuck’s sake), instead gives us a man high of intellect but devoid of hope who has been irrevocably soured by the very city he’s hired to protect. On the flip side, Brad Pitt virtually is Mills. Young, headstrong and tragically unprepared for the horrors he’s about to face, he ends up being our eyes as he attempts to navigate a population gradually growing evermore disinterested in it’s own decay and the team of Fincher and Walker waste no time grabbing us by the scruff of the neck and dragging us through a cavalcade of fascinatingly grotesque murder sites. With each one more disturbing than the last, and doubt of Se7en’s stealth-horror credentials need only look at the unforgettable Sloth victim who manages to deliver one of the finest jump scares of the millennium. But while Doe’s work us undeniably shocking, the real kicker is you just can’t shake that nagging feeling that, while his methods are blatantly insane, the crazed fucker might have some sort of point as the world we’re currently living is still as desensitised as fuck. Then before you know it, Fincher has completely pulled the rug out from under us and swapped out the oppressive city for an agoraphobe’s worst nightmare as the devastating finale takes place in a wide open space lined with skeletal pylons and still somehow manages to punch our heart out like a Mortal Kombat fatality. We just don’t see it coming and the devious way the movie suddenly reveals its hand still carries a hefty amount of power over thirty years on.

Impressively timeless, Se7en still has an uncanny ability to wound even after all these years and once we’re played in with Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer To God” and then played out with David Bowie’s “The Heart’s Filthy Lesson”, you’re not the same person. But while that sting in the tail still carries plenty of wallop, it’s those performances and and a director dead set on pissing on the ruled that endures this trip to Hell delivers you into se7enth hea7en.
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟